page_title: World War I
section_title: Ottoman Empire
hierarchical_section_title: World War I / War crimes / Genocide and ethnic cleansing / Ottoman Empire
caption_attribution_description: English: Picture showing Armenians killed during the Armenian Genocide. Image taken from Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, written by Henry Morgenthau, Sr. and published in 1918. Original description: "THOSE WHO FELL BY THE WAYSIDE. Scenes like this were common all over the Armenian provinces, in the spring and summer months of 1915. Death in its several forms---massacre, starvation, exhaustion---destroyed the larger part of the refugees. The Turkish policy was that of extermination under the guise of deportation" Français&#160;: Photo montrant le corps de plusieurs Arméniens abattus alors que se déroulait le génocide des Arméniens. Photo publiée dans Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, ouvrage rédigé par Henry Morgenthau senior et publié en 1918. Deutsch: Auf diesem Foto schrieb der amerikanische Botschafter Henry Morgenthau senior: „Szenen wie diese waren in den Frühlings- und Sommermonaten 1915 in den armenischen Provinzen der Türkei an der Tagesordnung. Tod in mehreren Formen—Massaker, Verhungern, Erschöpfung—vernichtete den Großteil der Flüchtlinge. Die türkische Politik war die einer Vernichtung unter dem Deckmantel der Deportation“.
context_page_description: World War I, also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It is also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatant deaths and 13 million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the related 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 17–100 million deaths worldwide.
  On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb Yugoslav nationalist, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, leading to the July Crisis. In response, Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia on 23 July. Serbia's reply failed to satisfy the Austrians, and the two moved to a war footing.
  A network of interlocking alliances enlarged the crisis from a bilateral issue in the Balkans to one involving most of Europe.
context_section_description: The ethnic cleansing of the Ottoman Empire's Armenian population, including mass deportations and executions, during the final years of the Ottoman Empire is considered genocide. The Ottomans carried out organised and systematic massacres of the Armenian population at the beginning of the war and portrayed deliberately provoked acts of Armenian resistance as rebellions to justify further extermination. In early 1915, a number of Armenians volunteered to join the Russian forces and the Ottoman government used this as a pretext to issue the Tehcir Law (Law on Deportation), which authorised the deportation of Armenians from the Empire's eastern provinces to Syria between 1915 and 1918. The Armenians were intentionally marched to death and a number were attacked by Ottoman brigands. While an exact number of deaths is unknown, the International Association of Genocide Scholars estimates 1.5 million. The government of Turkey has consistently denied the genocide, arguing that those who died were victims of inter-ethnic fighting, famine, or disease during World War I; these claims are rejected by most historians.
  Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Ottoman Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Greeks, and some scholars consider those events to be part of the same policy of extermination. At least 250,000 Assyrian Christians, about half of the population, and 350,000–750,000 Anatolian and Pontic Greeks were killed between 1915 and 1922.
caption: Armenians killed during the Armenian Genocide. Image taken from Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, written by Henry Morgenthau, Sr. and published in 1918.[335]
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